Thoughts on Torah, working, living in Israel and how they go together.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

How to stop Charedim from burning garbage bins

I read in one of the free newspapers, a novel idea of how to stop the garbage bin burnings in Charedi neighborhoods. Put pesukim with the shem of Hashem on the bins, because no one would chas v'shalom commit the aveira of destroying Hashem's name.

This is so laughable it is pathetic. Burning the bins is clearly an issur of gezela (stealing) yet for some reason that doesn't stop the burners. And yet, the issur of destroying the shem Hashem will deter people, it shows how badly out of whack our priorities are.

4 comments:

This post reminds me of the (true?) story about the fellow who worked in a haredi operation, who left a container with milk for his coffee in the communal fridge. Someone was taking his milk and notes about g'neivah had no impact. One day he put a note on the container whih said "not cholov yisroel." The fellow never had a problem with anyone taking his milk.

It's also a total misunderstanding of the fundamentalist mindset. Following 9/11, the Intifadeh in Israel and all that other fun jihadist stuff, I heard suggestions from well-intentioned people that "the way" to deter Islamic terrorists is to announce that we will bury their body in pig skins because "then they believe they won't go to heaven."

Putting aside the dubiousness of that statement (like many things, it has a grain of something resembling it in truth--the gun lubricant the British were using in the 19th century was made from lard; and Indian Muslims were outraged when they discovered this), does anyone actually think that the way to paralyze terrorists has a quick solution? This suggestion was made by well meaning religious Christians (some of them, anyway) who would laugh if one would suggest that they wouldn't go to heaven if they were buried in a box of Qur'ans. I heard the suggestion made also by well meaning religious Jews who would laugh at the suggestion that our own relationship with pork is such that it can affect our heaven from beyond the grave.

Similarly, with the fundamentalist mindset these people would burn sifrei Torah if it somehow seemed a way to achieve their goals: it wouldn't take great acrobatics to simply decide that all sifrei Torah written by Tzionim are seforim written by a min and that they *must* be burned. Al ahas kamma ve-kamma, garbage bins.

I once felt the need to report some seriously dangerous behavior involving what looked like heavy drinking and roudy disturbing behaviors to a Rebbitzen whose husband was in charge of these boys.

She didn't seem to get a rush until I made the off-hand comment that at least they had the good sense to remove their yarmulkes when involving themselves a chillul Hashem on Shabbos no less.

Apparantely removing your yarmulke was the straw to break the camel's back. Drinking, girls, cussing me out for asking them to be quiet and not wake the baby. . . not so great. Taking off your yarmulke, criminal.